


oh, but you and all your vibrant youth (how could anything bad ever happen to you?)

by TotallynotRemus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Ben Hargreeves Needs Help, Blood and Injury, Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven, Gen, Ghost Ben Hargreeves, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Pre-Canon, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25664104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotallynotRemus/pseuds/TotallynotRemus
Summary: If he’s being honest with himself— and isn’t that a dreadful concept?— Klaus is grateful that Ben has always been at his side ever since they’ve both left the Academy, keeping him company throughout the years and keeping him sane, ghost or not. He has no idea where he’d be otherwise; that is if he’d even still be here.Really, how lucky then, for Ben to be different from all the other ghosts. Klaus tries to not think too hard as to why.For the Bad Things Happen bingo - Hair Matted With Blood.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514339
Comments: 27
Kudos: 126





	oh, but you and all your vibrant youth (how could anything bad ever happen to you?)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I am at a loss to tell you how I feel; before you call it creepy, please check out my lower spine; a dead pilgrim is following but he's a friend of mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332032) by [ObliqueOptimism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliqueOptimism/pseuds/ObliqueOptimism). 



> Finallyyyyyyyyy done with this one!!!
> 
> Also seriously all the props to Sara (@ObliqueOptimism) whose story that inspired me to write this one, but also who helped me and encouraged me as I wrote it. And thanks to Roo (@hermitreunited) who also helped me keep going!
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it! <33

There’s something to be said about cheap diners and how homey they feel to Klaus. 

Maybe it’s how the whole retro atmosphere almost manages camouflage how the place is a shithole that probably had to bribe the sanitary inspector to be able to stay open, or the fact that they have affordable breakfast food twenty-four seven, always ready to be served by underpaid waitresses that won’t kick him out no matter how he dresses or smells, nor comment on the state of his crumpled dollar bills or how they both know he’ll have some blow on the filthy bathroom of the place afterwards (or blow someone, depending on the day).

Oh, what now? Anyone would if they had corpses following them around all day, screaming and crying in their ear about their gruesome deaths and how unfair life is and blah blah blah. Whatever! _It’s a coping mechanism,_ or so his therapist at rehab had said. A way to be able to deal with the traumas of his childhood and the bad hand life has given him as well as his shitty powers.

Klaus may have stopped listening after that but that doesn’t really matter.

What matters is… 

What matters is this: drugs help. They feel pretty fucking good too if he may say so himself, but more important than that, they keep all those pesky ghosts away from him and that makes everything else worth it, whatever the cost may be. (It has to. Right? It has to make it all worth it.)

Well, keep away all ghosts but one.

Ben.

If he’s being honest with himself— and isn’t that a dreadful concept?— Klaus is grateful that Ben has always been at his side ever since they’ve both left the Academy, keeping him company throughout the years and keeping him _sane,_ ghost or not. It’s nice to have someone there. Someone that cares. And for all that they may have grown a little distant there towards the end, Klaus feels like they’d always understood each other; the two unlucky outsiders inside their little superhero club. The weakest and the strongest, two sides of the same fucked up coin.

What was he thinking about again…? Right. _Diners._

The best breakfast food $5 can buy.

“So what are we thinking today: eggs, or pancakes?” Klaus asks out loud as his eyes skim through the thin menu, uncaring about how the woman at the table next to him stares at him oddly before moving to sit elsewhere. “Pancakes, or eggs?”

Ben turns at the sound of his voice, and Klaus ignores how his raised hoodie does nothing to hide the grisly mess that is the left side of his face as well as how his eyes always seem to look both through him and straight at his soul, unblinking. It’s easier to do now, after so long. Almost a habit by now. And it’s not like Klaus wasn’t already used to a little gore, his powers being what they are, even if it’s still quite a sight.

It’s still _Ben,_ and that’s all that matters.

He always had a tendency to end up bloody anyway.

He’s been quiet today. Moody, really, ever since Klaus took those two little magic pills that seemed to call his name and then topped it off with two extra ones, just for fun. Ben always hates when Klaus gets high. But it’s not like he could help it, he’s not a nun to deny such temptation! And it’s been a stressful day— week— hell, _life._ He needed them. They can’t all be saints.

Klaus raises his eyebrows. “So?”

 _“Kl—mmmmhng,”_ Ben tries, just as he starts to choke on the blood that seems to spill from his mouth every so often, dripping down his chin and neck and pooling on top of the diner table before disappearing as if it’d never been there, only for more to drip. _"Klauussssss."_

It’s a little gross, but Klaus doesn’t judge him for it. Can’t, really. After all, Klaus can be a little gross sometimes too and he doesn't even have death as an excuse. Only homelessness and drug addiction and his overall charming personality. It happens.

He hums, taking Ben’s answer in consideration as he looks back at the menu. He does make a good point. "You know what, Benny? You're right. You just can't go wrong with some classic B&E."

Ben makes another choked sound, and Klaus takes that as an agreement. It's settled then.

Klaus flags down the exhausted-looking waitress giving her a bright smile before making their order— who, to her defense, doesn’t even wince or grimace before approaching him, for all that she’d been staring, nor does she question his request— trading small talk with a still mostly silent Ben as they wait for their food to arrive, which doesn’t take long. And God, just the smell of it is enough to make his mouth water, but the _food…_ The bacon looks panties-dropping delicious. He almost drops down on one knee and proposes to it the second the plate is placed in front of him.

Maybe Klaus shouldn’t have gone so long without eating anything. 

_“Klaus,”_ Ben calls his attention before he can start stuffing his face. _“Klaus, please— help me. You have to help me.”_

Oh fuck right, how shitty of him. He completely forgot.

"Sorry! Of course, here. Have some." He scoots some of the food to the second empty plate he'd asked for, placing it in front of Ben who doesn't look away from where he'd been staring at Klaus with unseeing eyes. Klaus grins. "Bon appetit, mon cher frère!"

_“Klaussssss.”_

Really, Klaus has no idea where he’d be without Ben; that is if he’d even still be here, which he’s not so sure of, to be honest. He probably would’ve been dead a long time ago had he been alone all this time. How lucky then, for Ben to be different from all the other ghosts.

Klaus tries to not think too hard as to why.

…

_“He’s gone, Klaus. P—Please. Don’t do this to yourself, to us. He’s gone. Ben’s… Ben’s dead.”_

_“No, No, I know Diego, I know, but I can see him, I can, he’s right there—!”_

_“Klaus, stop.”_

_“Why won’t any of you believe me?! Ben’s here! He never left, he’s still— he’s still here, I swear, it’s him—!”_

_“Please Klaus, stop. Don’t make me rumor you. Not now, not at Be— not at his funeral.”_

_“I…”_

_“You can barely walk, Klaus. Don’t try to pretend you’re not high. How can you… What did you take?”_

_“Shut up, shut up, shut up! Just listen to me, he’s right there!”_

_“Klaus, don’t.”_

_“I don’t want to have to make you leave. You deserve to be here, but not… not like this.”_

_“Please just stop. For once, just stop.”_

_“... But it’s Ben.”_

…

No matter how many times you do it, how many boring therapy sessions you’re forced to sit through, rehab never once stops being a pain in the ass. He doesn’t know what’s worse: the withdrawal, the ghosts, all the sob stories he has to listen to in group therapy or the sheer boredom that inevitably comes with being stuck in this place. They should add it to their brochure. A few drugs really would liven up the place. 

Seriously, Klaus doesn’t know why they even bother— it never works anyway, what are they hoping for? That the fifth or sixth time will magically do the charm? _As if!_ He’s getting plastered and high as soon as he sets a foot outside this place, low body resistance be damned. They should just let him go already and be done with. Let him fly with the birdies!

Klaus had tried to tell them that, but for some reason they just rolled their eyes and directed him to his usual room. Which, rude.

He supposes some people just won’t listen to reason.

“Maybe I could escape,” Klaus muses. The light thump of the stress ball in his hands being thrown against the wall echoes through the room, and he tries to focus on that over the sobbing that always follows him whenever he has the misfortune of being sober. “You reckon I could? I was able to escape once at that other clinic, but I had the help of one of the nurses. I don’t know if there’s any here that would be down to getting dirty.”

At least, there’s none willing to do it in exchange of giving him some pills, as he’d unfortunately found out two stays ago.

“Kid, no offense, but if you don’t shut up I’ll shove you through a window myself,” his bunkmate says, voice gruffy; an older guy he’d seen before at group therapy but never really talked to. “You’re stuck here. Just accept the help they’re offering you while you still have a chance.”

Klaus frowns.

He scoffs, though his tone is airy despite his annoyance. “Thanks, but no thanks. And I wasn’t talking to you in the first place.”

Looking to the side he tries to grab Ben’s attention, making a show of rolling his eyes and ignoring the _“crackhead”_ comment from downstairs that somehow sounds more sad than judgmental. Ben doesn’t answer in kind, but that’s okay. He never does anyway. 

Instead Ben drags himself closer, looking more awake than he has in a while despite the tears going down his face. 

_“Klaus— help me, Klaus, please, please help me, you have to help me,”_ he begs, his mangled arms reaching out trying and failing to touch him, growing more frustrated each time. Doesn’t he know by now it won’t work? _“Why? Why won’t you help me, why don’t you care? Don’t you see? Please! Klaus, Klaus, please, help me Klaus, it hurts, it hurts so much. You have to do something, you have to make it stop. Klaus!”_

No, Klaus thinks to himself. _This_ is the worst part of rehab. 

Having to deal with not only Ben’s disappointment and worry, but also with the hope that always seems to spark in him whenever they end up here again, for all that it seems to dim more and more each time. The hope that maybe— maybe this time Klaus will be able to turn his life around. That he’ll get his shit together and stop hurting everyone around him, including himself, and finally stop being such a phenomenal fuck up.

Klaus wonders how long that hope will last. It didn’t survive in anyone else.

Though he supposes Ben will always be different.

“Come on now, Benny. We both know it won’t stick even if I stay,” Klaus says, despite the fact that the words taste like acid on his tongue. He fucking hates this part, and all the guilt that follows it. Ben deserves better than this, than _him._

It’s true though. They both know it.

But Ben doesn’t seem to accept it as an answer, the mother-hen. _“Please— please! I can still feel Them, tearing me apart— They never stop, They just want blood, I told Dad that, I told him They wouldn’t stop—”_ he continues, voice raising even as he coughs and chokes on the blood that never stops coming. He hugs his own broken body. _“You have to help me, Klaus, please, I didn’t want to die— why did I have to die?”_

“I’m fine! I can take care of myself just fine, I’m living the dream and you know it.” He plasters a fake smile on, gesturing wildly with his hands. It won’t fool Ben, not really; he always sees right through him. Klaus shrugs. “Well, or a nightmare. I guess it depends on the angle you look at it.”

Ben screams, holding his own head in hands as he pulls on blood-matted hair, before it turns into more sobbing.

_“Klaus—!”_

“What, I am taking this seriously! You could even say I’m _dead_ serious.” Klaus winks at him, though Ben only lets out another painful scream. No sense of humor on that one, eech. “Oh, come on. That one was funny! Did you get it? Dead? Because ghosts.”

One of these days he’ll get Ben to admit he likes his sense of humor. Any day now.

 _“I couldn’t stop Them— the pain was too much, it hurts so much, They just wouldn’t stop— why didn’t you stop Them, stop him? Why did you all let me die?!”_ Ben asks, and his voice grows louder, angrier. More desperate. _“How could you?! It should’ve been you!”_

Klaus stills. “That’s not— of course the OD was an accident, Ben.” 

He thinks he hears his bunkmate let out a heavy sigh, but he can’t be sure over the sound of Ben’s cries and the muttering of the ghosts that seem to not notice him yet; they’re not the ones haunting him, after all. Klaus is sure that will have changed once the night comes around, but for now, it’s nice to be ignored. The man gets up, throwing him a look that Klaus pretends not to see before leaving the room with a shake of his head.

Well, at least they have some privacy now.

Klaus picks at his ratty blanket so he has something to do with his hands, refusing to look at Ben’s direction once he speaks up again.

“It was just a stupid accident,” he assures him, even though he’s not so sure himself. “I was just too fucked up to think, I promise. I didn’t mean to.” Even though he might’ve. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”

But he did.

_“You killed me!”_

“I— Okay. Okay, fine. I’ll stay,” Klaus promises, throwing his hands up in defeat before he lets a small, sad smile slip that he’s quick to hide, putting up a faux-pout instead. “The weather is miserable anyway, at least here we don’t have to look for a place to sleep.”

He owes Ben at least that much, for never giving up on him. 

Later, as the sun sets and the sky grows dark, the rest of the ghosts don’t take long to ambush him; their wails for help and vengeance joining Ben’s own in a morbid parody of a choral with no distinct rhythm or conductor, so different from the music Vanya would make echo through the house when they were younger. Klaus tries to keep his focus on Ben’s voice instead, louder and clearer than the others as it always is. Ben keeps going the entire night, not stopping even to take a breath he no longer needs, probably hoping to either drown out the other ghosts or at least calm him down as he always tries to do. It’s the only thing keeping Klaus from having a full-blown panic attack.

It doesn’t stop him from crying though, even though Klaus has no idea why there are tears in his eyes. It’s no different from any other night.

Daddy Dearest always did call him a coward.

…

_He doesn’t remember what the mission was about._

_That’s fucked up, right? His brother dies a violent and pointless death and Klaus doesn’t even know why, because he didn’t care enough to pay attention to the debriefing beforehand and was too high and out of it to do the one job he had: be the lookout. Didn’t even know what was happening until he heard the Horror be let out only to be followed by Ben screaming— a raw, agonizing sound that echoed through the building and chilled him to the bone, making his heart drop the instant he recognized the voice._

_He’d like to say it only lasted a second. That it was quick, even if not painless._

_That wasn’t the case._

…

Shy, mousy little Vanya wrote a book.

Klaus isn't surprised; the little sister he remembers had always been too caring, yes, too frail and sensitive, crying at dead ants and papercuts alike. But she'd always been angry too, with a fierce temper to her that she would bottle up time after time until it had no choice but to explode and then she would be screaming at whoever had caught her wraith with a righteous look in her face, the only one of them that ever really directly yelled at Dad when not even Five, who'd always been challenging him, had dared to raise his voice at the man. _Brave,_ Klaus thought. _In small enough doses for it to be able to survive._

He remembers the open envy in her big doe eyes too, the resentment that only kept growing as the years went by.

So no, Klaus isn't surprised. He's completely fucking furious.

Really, he'd almost be impressed with the ballsy move— sticking it to the old man and ruining the image he so desperately tried to keep of his precious Academy, and Klaus definitely approves of _that—_ if only she hadn't gone and spilled in those pages all of their flaws, secrets and traumas too, selling their childhood abuse for some pity points and a few minutes of fame. Like she had any right to. Like it wasn't a violation of the lowest kind. Painting them all as both victims and villains, as if they hadn't just been children too, just as lost and alone as she had been.

As if she hadn't stood right next to their father while he barked orders at them, watching them with a timer in her tiny hands as they were forced to beat each other until they bled, when other nine years old played games and watched TV instead.

 _Brave,_ Klaus thought then. _Lucky,_ sometimes.

 _Hypocritical,_ he thinks now.

“Can you believe this?!” Klaus asks, waving his stolen copy of the book around as he stares at Ben in disbelief, who only groans and growls, just as infuriated as Klaus himself. He continues his reading, in a high-pitched voice nothing alike his sister’s, _“‘If we were all starved for Dad’s approval, Klaus seemed to strive for any kind of attention at all, even the negative. As children it was funny, but we all soon started to grow tired of it. Never one to care about what was appropriate, especially once he started to rarely show up sober, and always more than willing to bend the truth or just outright make up lies, Klaus came to be the perfect example of the Boy Who Cried Wolf.’_ I mean, what the hell does that even mean?”

The worst thing about the book isn’t the heavily biased or even inaccurate parts of it, and trust him there are many, but the truthful ones instead.

Like Ben.

For someone who hadn’t even been there for most of it, Vanya sure as hell spared no details— from that fatal mission, where she pointed the blame at Dad and Luther for dragging Ben to his doom, to Klaus’ eventual breakdown at the funeral. It was all there down to the details.

It’s a tough read. Klaus had to take breaks when reading the chapter about Ben’s death just to be able to get through, and the smell of his sick further down the alley would bother him if he wasn’t already used to worse. Just the same, he finds, the book is impossible to put down. He feels a morbid need to keep going, to know what else is there, even if something tells him he’ll probably be better not knowing.

Next to him Ben makes a desperate, keening noise, trying to reach for him with his bloodied hands. Klaus takes it as encouragement to keep going.

 _‘After Ben’s funeral, it felt as if we had lost two brothers at once,’_ the chapter continues, though Klaus no longer has the strength to read it out loud. There’s no need, anyway. No doubt Ben is reading over his shoulder with him. _‘We were all so lost in our grief, trying to make sense of the emptiness left behind first by Five and then by Ben, that it took us a while to notice the change in Klaus. To this day I still can’t be sure whether he had been telling the truth about seeing Ben, or if it had been another cry for attention at the most inappropriate time. Maybe it’d been his way of dealing with the loss, or, more frighteningly and yet not implausible, the moment Klaus lost his mind to the trauma and the drugs.’_

_‘I admit I never understood Klaus or his powers enough to be able to tell, but I prefer to believe it was a lie, even if in my heart I fear the only lie is the one I tell myself. I remember his screams late at night, and the sight of him muttering nonsense to himself in the dark hallways of the Academy. With what little I was able to decipher from it I know that whoever or whatever he was talking to, it wasn’t our brother.’_

_‘The lie feels kinder.’_

Klaus throws the book at the nearest wall, only to run to try and save it from the suspicious-smelling puddle it almost fell into.

He can feel himself shaking, overwhelmed with so many thoughts and feelings that can’t seem to fit inside him and instead all pour out in tears, in agonizing screams and the need to punch something solid or hide, hide away from the world and himself and that damned book that had no right to be published in the first place. How could she write that? Didn’t she know that he would read it, that others would too?

“I can’t believe her,” he says, and though he tries to keep the anger in his voice it comes out hurt and shaky instead. “I just can’t… She’s wrong, of course she is. Why would she say that? I know they don’t understand, that they didn’t believe me, but. I can’t believe she’d say that about me.”

Klaus feels more than sees as Ben drags himself closer, and though it’s useless he can’t help but look away in an attempt to hide his tears. He shouldn’t be letting this get to him— he’d decided to not give a shit about what others think of him years ago, had known his family wrote him off as a junkie and a compulsive liar and apparently now as fucking insane too— but he can’t help it, it still hurts.

(It scares him.)

To know that they believe he’d be low enough to lie about Ben being there just for attention, lie about their _brother,_ and that apparently they’d rather think he snapped than to believe he could be telling the truth. _Not implausible,_ she said, and then heavily implied it a bit more at the end.

(What if she’s right?)

And maybe he’d been a little out of it during the funeral, a little desperate perhaps, but that’s understandable. Right? 

It doesn’t mean anything.

 _“Klaussssssssssssss,”_ Ben drags out, trying to get his attention once again, and Klaus startles at the sound of it before remembering that it’s just Ben, it’s the same Ben of always, and there’s no reason to be afraid. _“Kl—hnng— Klausss, help me. How could you let me die?”_

Klaus takes a deep breath, nodding to his brother and easing his hold on the book.

He gives the other a smile, and laments once more the fact that they can’t touch as the other reaches for his neck only for his hands to go through. A hug sure would be nice right now. Klaus can’t even remember the last time he hugged his brother was. Before his death, obviously, but when?

He looks back, and thinks they might’ve been fourteen.

“You’re right,” Klaus tells him, a little more sure of himself now. Ben usually is. “Yeah, no, you’re right. Screw them! I got you, my own guardian ghost. They’re a bunch of assholes anyway, we don’t need them. We have each other, yeah? Just us against the world.”

(She can’t be. He doesn’t know how he’d survive if it was true.)

…

_Klaus can’t remember much of that day._

_He knows he had been alone in his room getting prepared when it happened— the funeral had been hours away still, but Father had decided to make it a public event— to show the people the Umbrella Academy was staying united and strong, even in the face of such a tragedy, and that their brother had died a hero. It was all pretend and bold-faced lies of course, but then, everything about their family was made of lies— and Klaus had known that if he was going to get through that it would be either dead or wasted, and so gotten an early start to his day drinking._

_Funerals are hard, okay._

_You see, normal people would get dressed in their appropriately dark mourning clothes for this, unafraid to show their grief and knowing that everyone around them would understand their pain and not judge them for it. Not this family though. No, for them the occasion meant putting on the same stupid uniforms they wore every day as if nothing happened while taking breaks to cry silently in one of the many bathrooms of the Academy before quickly and thoroughly hiding any evidence of the act, lest their tears be considered a sign of emotional weakness and a failure to control themselves. Oh, but imagine the shame! Children found guilty of having emotions over their brother’s death._

_Lucky for him, Klaus’ gotten used to his role as the family disappointment a long time ago._

_He’d just taken another shot of vodka from his flask (stolen from papi, as most things were, and ironically engraved with that same damn umbrella as everything else in their lives, including themselves), half hoping it would kill him half hoping it would drown everything else instead, as he halfheartedly searched for his missing shoes that he could’ve sworn he’d been wearing only minutes before._

_It’s when he considered checking the bar downstairs (what? Maybe he’d left it there, surely it wouldn’t hurt to check), that he turned around and—_

_Ben was there._

_He thinks he remembers screaming, but can’t for the life of him figure out why._

_…_

It’s not true, though. It’s _not._

Klaus won’t even give the possibility the slightest thought; he refuses to betray his brother like that after he’s stuck with him for years— helping him and keeping him company even though that can’t have been easy for him. Even though Klaus isn’t worth it. But Ben thinks he is, and is still around to this day, and he won’t pay him back for that by doubting him just because their siblings are dicks.

No.

He’s glad Ben is there with him. Wouldn’t trade him for any of them.

Ben groans, throwing his hands up in defeat and glaring at him. _“I hate you.”_

Klaus stills, frozen in place.

“I love you too, bro,” he tells him, with a genuine smile on his face, though his hands won’t stop shaking. Klaus doesn’t know why.

Everything is fine. Ben’s with him after all, and he’s still the same.

**Author's Note:**

> :)
> 
> Thank you for reading and please don't forget to give kudos if you liked it and leave a comment telling me your thoughts, they feed the hungry author's soul! <3 Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Feel free to talk to me on tumblr @ my tua blog bentacles-hargreeves, or even @ my main remuslupinsmiled, where I'm up to talk about literally anything and am almost always online!


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